


the waiting room

by Ias



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hallucinations, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 17:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14856938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: On the long walk out, James wanders through waking dreams; into parlor rooms and dining halls, looking always for home.





	the waiting room

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the [absolutely jaw-dropping cover art](http://zehstern.tumblr.com/post/174999783579/cover-art-for-the-waiting-room-by-ias) by [zehstern!](http://zehstern.tumblr.com/)

 

His first thought, when he opens his eyes onto the dark-timbered ceiling of his rented rooms, is that Mrs. Deakly has been neglecting the coal stove yet again. Was it only yesterday he had commented to her on the bitter cold his rooms on the upper floors of the apartment could achieve? And she had assured him she’d add some extra coal to the fire in the evening and morning both. Evidently, she had not. He can quite literally see his breath fogging in the air, and isn’t that absurd, even in mid-March?

He turns his head, inspecting the dark curtains he leaves parted every night, to allow the pale light of morning to wake him. He’s a feeling that he’s forgotten something, or perhaps that something is _wrong_ —an early meeting he’s meant to attend, perhaps? But the officers meeting isn’t until first bell, and if Francis needs something too direly he certainly knows which tent to—

James goes very still and very quiet, and he does not close his eyes. He keeps them riveted on the window, with its glass and its wreaths of frost. The room, the impossible room, seems to stare right back at him; whole, real, unfaltering. Slowly, he takes a breath. Slower still he lets the pads of his fingers smooth over the familiar bedsheets, so much softer than the rough cloth he shivered to sleep in during the bright Arctic night before. His hand trembles. Only slightly.

This must be madness, at last. The darkness Thomas Blanky spoke of, once the mind is past all hope. Only it isn’t dark, and James isn’t afraid. He can smell the coal dust, the faint aroma of cooking pork from the kitchen two floors below, can hear the turn of wagon wheels on the street cobbles outside, the voice of a child selling newspapers.

He wants to call out to someone, though he is not sure who; Mrs. Deakly or Francis or God Almighty. But the first seems about as helpful in this situation as the last has been thus far, so he decides to go look for Francis.

Pushing the covers away, James swings his legs onto the wooden floorboards. They feel sturdy beneath his feet. He stands up and crosses the room, quicker now that he’s decided. The door is just before it. If he can walk through—

—but his hands touch canvas, not wood, and he’s back in his tent on the desolate plain of King William land, shivering in the draft from the half-opened flap. The men of the camp pass by without a look, and he flicks the canvas back before they chance to see the mingled relief and disappointment so open on their captain’s face.

He settles back onto the bed and the dull ache settles back into him, eating through his arm and into his side like a worm. All is back as it should be. Which is to say, nothing is as it should be, but it is, at least, how he left it.

 

* * *

 

 

“We ought to hug the coast.”

Francis smooths his hand over the map of King William Land on the table before the officer’s meeting, though to call the brittle paper a map would be charitable to the point of delusion. His fingers settle over the lower part of the map where the inking goes from uncertain to entirely absent; as if he can feel his way over the missing topography before they’re forced to cross it.

In truth, James is having difficulty keeping pace with the conversation. His mind keeps returning to the pain in his side, which seems to bore deeper into him by the second. He wants to touch it. Just for a moment, because maybe the rush of fresh pain would bring some clarity, or relief—but he keeps his arm held loosely at his side instead, and drifts like a ship with no anchor.  

“But sir,” Little is saying, “We add nearly twice the miles by following the coast, when we could cut straight inland and make it to Back’s Great Fish River in half the time.”

“You’re absolutely right, lieutenant,” Francis says. From his tone, he’s about to disagree. “But if the leads do open up—a possibility I am _not_ discounting, despite our ill luck these past years—then we will save ourselves weeks that even a swifter overland journey could not muster.”

James’s head threatens to bob forward. It’s like being in a separate room, listening to their voices as if through a door half-ajar. He stares at the tabletop, his hand fidgeting atop it; did he sleep last night? The night before? Yes, he must have, for he spent those hours in his tent. His mind feels fuzzy at the edges, like a watercolor bleeding color into color.

“What do you think, James?”

James’s head jerks up. Blinking the haze back from the edges of his vision, he opens his mouth to answer Francis’s question as best he can with only a cursory idea of what they’re talking about—and then stops.

He’s seated at a table of strangers. Men with neatly trimmed whiskers and hair, the blue of their dress uniforms unfaded, the gold of their buttons burnished bright. But then, as if bringing a print into focus by use of a magnifying glass, their faces resolve into familiar ones: Little, before the beard overtook his face. Irving, before the hollows of hunger chewed so deeply beneath his eyes. Hodgson, his skin no longer sagging and grey.

And Francis—Francis sits across from him in his captain’s full uniform, so bright and clean that he is almost unbearable to look at. He looks just as he did when they first disembarked, only—no. In fact, he looks nothing like the sour-faced captain who only smiled with his fourth glass of whiskey in hand. The man before him now has been transmuted. He’s the man Francis would have been ( _will be_ , James tells himself fiercely) if they ever made it home.

“The coast,” James manages at last, licking dry lips. He keeps his eyes on Francis the entire time, as unnerved by what he’s seeing as he is captivated by it. “We’ve already seen some evidence of a thaw, and the further south we move the more likely we are to encounter it.”

At the edges of his vision, James can see the command tent flickering back into existence. But Francis—perhaps it is because James does not look away, but even as the backdrop of weathered canvas closes in behind him, Francis remains clothed in a beautiful vision. James realizes his breathing has gone short, but no one else at the table seems to have noticed.

“Very well, then,” he says, knocking his knuckles lightly on the table. “We continue with our present course—we’ll remain here for three more days, to allow time for the sick to rest, and to re-inventory our supplies. Now, I suspect, we all could use some rest.” He looks back to James when he says this last.

And then it is over once again, and Francis is in his greying shirtsleeves and dull black vest, looking as tired as James feels.

“James,” Francis says as the others rise to leave. “Remain back with me for a moment, if you please.”

Francis leans forward to prop his elbows on the table and lace his fingers before him. “How are you feeling?” he asks, as soon as Irving, Little, and Jopson have filed out of the tent. Conversely, with just the two of them the space actually feels smaller. As if it has contracted to draw them closer.

James’s side twinges. He blinks twice, and then forces a smile. “Fine. Just tired.”

“Then go get some sleep,” Francis says after a long moment of scrutinizing him. “Each man deserves to escape this wretched place, if only in dreams.” He reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Though I’ve been having few enough of those myself, lately. And those I do are all of tinned food and sledge hauling.”  

James swallows. “Perhaps it’s better not to dream of things we can’t have.”  

Francis laughs. “Have you tried hauling a sledge in dreams and waking for days at a time?”

“No, but I’m fairly certain I’ve seen you _actually_ asleep while hauling—a trick I wouldn’t mind you teaching me, by the way.”

“Just wait til you’re tired enough,” Francis replies, clasping him on the arm with a grin. “It’ll come quite naturally.”

His grip on James’s arm is warm. His glove immaculately white.

 

* * *

 

 

A week later, James lingers around the edge of the medical tent under the pretense of inspecting boxes. These days, panic and despair are dry kindling. The wrong pair of eyes seeing their commander paying a lengthy and private visit to the medical tent could just provide the match.

So he remains outside, near enough to hear the soft unintelligible babble from within. Only when Goodsir’s latest patient—Henry Peglar, James notes out of habit, and resolves to check in on the man later—does James push past the flap and slip inside himself, as certain as he’s able that no one saw him enter.

The surgeon is just stoppering a bottle as James ducks in; the sight of him makes Goodsir’s eyebrows raise.

“Captain Fitzjames,” he says. Automatically, his hand strays towards the medical bag, always packed, by the door. “Am I needed somewhere?”

“Nowhere but here, I’m afraid,” James says, and after a moment comprehension dawns on Goodsir’s face.

“Right. Of course.” He sets down the bottle and steps past James to secure the tent flap. Aware as much as James is, no doubt, of how damaging rumors of one of their leaders’ failing health could be to morale. “What seems to be troubling you, Captain?”  

James leans back against the surgical table, folding his hands in front of him as he considers his words. “I’ve been having,” he says, “some strange fancies of late.”

The surgeon blinks, but it’s almost relief that touches his expression. “I’ve heard similar complaints from many of the men,” he says, already turning to his supplies.  “The lead, you see. I’ve a tonic—”

“No, no.” James waves him away. “I don’t believe that Gouldner’s is responsible for this.” 

Goodsir’s fingers still on the bottles he was about to lift; in a moment he turns to face James fully. “What kinds of fancies have you been experiencing, Captain?”

James smiles without feeling, glances at the sealed tent flap—as tempted to get up and leave as he is concerned about eavesdroppers. “They come to me at odd intervals—sometime days between them, sometimes only hours,” he says. “Always, they are incredibly vivid. One moment I’m standing in the command tent with the officers around me, and the next…” He trails off. Unable to put words to what he’s seen.

After a moment Goodsir leans forward, his eyes devoid of judgement. “It would help me,” he says, “if you could tell me specifics.”

James nods. Keeps his eyes on the ground. His hand fidgets where it’s tucked against his side, nearly close enough to press the old wound. “I’m back in England,” he says at last. “All the officers, they’re back in their dress uniforms. Drinking port in crystal glasses instead of water from flasks. Sometimes it lasts a moment, other times…” He raises a hand, and lets it fall without completing a gesture.

Goodsir’s brows have knitted slightly, his eyes intent. “You believe you are experiencing visual hallucinations.”

“Not only visual, doctor. It’s—it’s incredibly real. I can smell the coal, I can feel the warmth of a stove—can reach down and pick up a tea cup from the table, and feel its weight in my hand.” He shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Haven’t figured out the trick of actually tasting it yet, I’m afraid.”

For a moment, Goodsir simply regards him. At once, James regrets saying so much—the surgeon is far too easy to talk to. But when Goodsir steps forward, his expression contains no judgement. “Might I inspect your eyes, Captain?”

James concedes. With a gentle thumb and forefinger Goodsir pulls the lids back, his brow furrowed slightly. James stares at the upper corner of the tent and wills his wound not to pain him now.

“Any fever?” Goodsir says, moving to the other eye. “Nausea? Dizziness?”

“No more than usual,” James says wryly. “Nothing but these waking dreams.”

“Anything at all you can think of which might be causing them?”

James’s wound twinges like he’s been stabbed with a dull butter knife. He manages to disguise his flinch as a shiver. “No.”

At last Goodsir steps back. The crease between his brows has yet to dissipate. “I see nothing wrong with your eyes,” he says quietly. “No signs of fever, or any other illness which might cause what you’re describing. Are these… experiences interfering with your duties?”

“No. I feel quite lucid—or, at least, as lucid as I’m likely to be. It’s just that I’m no longer _here_.” He forces himself to hold the surgeon’s gaze. “Is there any natural explanation for this, doctor?”

It is strange, holding Goodsir’s eyes now, to remember the hesitant, uncertain man the doctor once was. There is none of that in him now—only the pinch of thought between his brows, and beneath that, the bedrock of calm.

“I could tell you that you are tired,” Goodsir says after a moment. “And starving, and sick—and that the mind can play all sorts of tricks, in circumstances such as these.” He leans forward slightly. His smile is sad. “But the truth is, Captain, I’m not a doctor—no matter what duties have fallen to me, or what title the men address me by. I am unable to give you any certain answer, let alone an explanation.” He looks at James more closely. “Tell me—are you experiencing any of these fancies right now?”

In the silence after Goodsir’s words, a distant train whistle. The same that James would hear every day as a boy, from the house where his aunt had raised him. The sunlight outside the tent flap is no longer harsh and white, but soft and golden and warm.

“No,” James says. “Nothing.”

Goodsir turns back to his medical kit. “Very well. Without knowing the cause, we cannot treat the disease—but in the meantime I can prepare something for you, to try and keep you clearer.”

“You misunderstand me.” James swallows. His throat feels as sandpaper. “I wished only to know whether these symptoms could be a sign of something worse.” And as long as they are not, he feels no desire to make them stop.  

Goodsir blinks. “Captain, I cannot recommend allowing these symptoms to go untreated and unchecked. If you would at least agree to regular visits so we might monitor—”

“I can’t have the men see me ducking in and out of the medical tent, Doctor.”

“Yes, of course, you’re quite right,” Goodsir says, shaking his head as if at his own careless thinking. “If you would allow it, then, I could come to your tent—perhaps once every few days? Surely the men could be led to believe I am only updating you on the condition of the ill.”

James says nothing. He’s thinking, in part, of the wound in his side; and what it will mean, if Goodsir is to discover it. It’s foolish, he knows, to hide it from one who would only wish to help—but he also knows the form that help will take. And he will not lounge in a boat sled while men no sicker than he is continue to toil. He will not be _weak_. If the span of seven years was not enough to save him, he could not see how the remedy might be found in their already straining medical supplies.

But Goodsir is still waiting, and James lacks the energy to engineer a plausible excuse, and the callousness to simply say no. “Very well. But just once a week, doctor.” James pauses. “And Goodsir—don’t tell Francis.”

Goodsir opens his mouth, as if to question or even argue the benefit of refusing to share such sensitive information with their expedition leader. But in the end, he only bows his head. “Very well, Captain. But I hope you will consider telling him yourself.” 

James nods in acknowledgement rather than agreement, straightening up at last. His heads swims slightly, but it is only the usual heady cocktail of exhaustion and hunger. The light outside the tent has returned to the washed-out white of the arctic sun, and the train whistle has faded into the distance.  

“I almost envy you,” Goodsir says, as James makes to step outside the tent. When he turns around the doctor is smiling, but it does not reach his eyes. “I would give anything to see home again. Even if I wasn’t truly there.”

James knows exactly what he would say, if he were Francis: _You will see it, Doctor. And it won’t just be an illusion_. But those words will not come to James’s tongue, no matter how he wishes to speak them. Perhaps he is simply not strong enough.

In the end he can only murmur his thanks, and slip out when his leaving the medical tent will be noted by no one at all.

 

* * *

 

 

James is finishing his morning shave—a precarious and miserable experience, done with barely-melted ice water and a dwindling bar of soap—when he hears a familiar throat cleared from outside the tent. Wincing at a final near-miss around his Adam’s apple, he sets the straight razor in the water and wipes the scant layer of soap from his face. “Come in, Francis.”

The captain pushes through the tent. “Good morning, James,” he says. “I had hoped—you’re bleeding.”

James’s fingers fly to his throat, and his eyes to the razor. In the bowl of water, a wisp of red has begun to dilute. Not such a near miss after all.

But before he can reach for the cloth, Francis is stepping forward and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. James goes absolutely still as Francis tilts his head to inspect the line of James’s neck, and gently presses it to the cut on his throat. It’s no rough woolen cloth he feels against his skin. Rather the silken softness of a gentleman’s pocket square. So delicate James can feel the bluntness of Francis’s fingers through the thinness of the fabric.

He blinks, frowns, tries to focus on the sensation of rough cloth he know should be there—but no matter how he tries, all he feels is that damnable softness, and Francis’s fingertips underneath.

James knows he should raise his own hand to hold the cloth himself, and allow Francis to step away; instead he tilts his head back ever so slightly, and they both join the fiction that Francis cannot feel the telling bob of his throat beneath his fingers as James swallows. 

“I didn’t even feel it,” James says.

“Then your razor must be a great deal sharper than mine,” Francis says. “I feel every nick, of which there are far too many.”

It’s as good an excuse as any to let his eyes trace the other man’s jaw, picking out a few shallow cuts at the tricky area just under his chin. His neck is clean shaven and bare of marks, no matter how closely James looks. Even the healthiest of the men find their cuts taking longer to close; and James is far from the healthiest among them. So it is not so strange that Francis remains like this with him for such an awfully long time.

“I’m sure that lieutenant Jopson would take pity on you, if you asked nicely enough,” James says, and cannot fight the grin as Francis’s eyebrows raise in amusement.

“Would he now,” Francis says, and whether intentional or not his fingers press a little harder. At once James finds it slightly more difficult to breathe, for reasons entirely unrelated to the pressure, ever careful, so near his windpipe. “Perhaps I should send him your way afterward, since you seem to be making a mess of it yourself.”

“You distracted me,” James says, allowing himself to savor the softness against his throat and the comforting weight of Francis’s fingers for one moment more, before Francis finally lowers the cloth. As soon as it reenters James’s line of sight, he sees it for the greying square of cotton it has always been, now with a blot of red in the center like the petal of a rose.

James is about to make one final quip, when Francis’s other hand rises, empty. His fingertips hover over the side of James’s neck as his thumb gently swipes the cut, checking for rising blood. He does this twice, nothing but that single point of contact, the rough callous on Francis’s thumb dragging over a single inch of James’s throat; and he has no desire for softness, there. He feels Francis the way he did not feel the razor biting his skin.

“There,” Francis says, folding the red spot of James’s blood into the center of the cloth so he can pocket it once again. “Now. If you’re done narrowly slitting your own throat, I was hoping you might accompany me on a brief walk to the coast. There’s some details on the map I’d like filled.”

It’s certainly not a task for a captain, let alone the expedition’s leader; but in this camp where there is little else to do but shave and count cans of poison and wait for a rest which never really comes, James would not dream of saying no.

The fact that it is Francis asking, of course, does not hurt either.  

 

* * *

 

 

They keep a leisurely pace, as much to concern energy as from the lack of any urgency.

James is thinking, as he trudges on at Francis’s side, about the handkerchief with its red flag of blood at the center. Folded neatly and tucked in his pocket as if it contained a snippet of a lady’s hair. That wasn’t how Francis meant it, of course. Likely he just didn’t want to stain the interior of his pocket. But he carries a piece of James with him, a drop of his most central being. James can feel it tugging him towards Francis with every step; and when their shoulders jostle, Francis does not move to put more space between them.

Something else is tugging him too. The crunch of his boots grows father away with every step, even as it’s echoed in Francis’s matching pace. He feels himself start to drift—the pain in his side grows duller. The cold loses its teeth. And this time, as he turns to look to Francis beside him, he lets the vision come. 

No dress uniform this time. He’s wearing the dark brown buckskin of a country jacket, over a dark green vest and a cream-colored cravat. In his hand is a polished walking stick which he jabs into the ground with certain steps like the crude crutch he uses on the harsh rocks of King William Land—only it sinks into soft earth and grass instead of jarring on unyielding stone. The longer James waits, the more the landscape shifts; he sees green out of the corners of his eyes, indistinct yet moving closer by the moment. 

“James?”

At once, James realizes that he has been staring; and that, for a short while that feels much longer, Francis has been staring back. “I’m sorry, Francis,” he says. “I was miles away.”

Francis smiles. Even though James can no longer feel the cold, it’s the warmest thing in sunny landscape. “Then I am sorry to have called you back.”

Down the slope from the walking path they follow, trees crowd up near the foot of the hill. Somewhere beyond them, James can hear a steam. He and Francis could be on a leisurely stroll on the grounds of a country manor, with tea and a warm hearth waiting when they return. “I’m glad to be here. Truly.”

“Now, that I find hard to believe,” Francis says. The green rolling hills of south England waver behind him like a mirage, but the sky above is the same flat white. James doesn’t look at it.. He keeps his eyes on the man beside him as if he too might dissolve into a barren Arctic wasteland.

“Seems we’ve come a long way already,” James manages.

“It all feels like a long way when we’re tired.” Francis comes to a stop, planting his stick in the ground—though it sinks into the soft earth, the sound is of clinking rock. It’s an odd image, to watch him draw the battered canteen from its strap over his fine waistcoat; he offers it to James first, and its taste is sharp as rust.

“And we’re always tired, now,” James finishes, his throat coarse from drinking too fast. As he passes it back to Francis and the man tilts his head back, James takes a long breath through his nose. He can smell the sourness of his clothes and the dry dusty nothing of the rocks around them. But he can also smell honeysuckle on the breeze, sweet and faint; along with the richness of warm earth and grass. He wants to lay down on that green pillow and close his eyes, but he’s as afraid of Francis demanding an explanation as he is of the vision suddenly melting away. He doesn’t want anything about this to change.

“We have time yet to rest before the next push,” Francis says, slinging the strap of his water bottle back over his shoulder.

“Would that I could,” James says with a weak smile. “Sleep hardly comes easily to me these days, no matter how tired I feel.”

“I have some drops that might help with that.”

“Shouldn’t _you_ be taking them?” 

Francis shoots him a sidelong glance. “No call for cheek, James.”

There are patterns embroidered on Francis’s waistcoat, vines and flowers and leaves in a thread so near to the color of the fabric they are invisible until the sun hits them. Surrounded by green and softness there seems no reason no to reach out. Before he can stop himself, James finds his fingers brushing not silk but the roughness of Francis’s greatcoat. Before he can pull back he feels Francis’s grip on his elbow, steadying him; and  looking into James’s face hard. His eyes are quite blue.

“Lost my footing,” James manages, and it’s such a pitiable excuse he almost expects Francis to laugh. But the man just raises an eyebrow.

“I’m going to send those drops by your tent tonight,” he says, the hand on his elbow guiding him back into their slow pace. Except it does not fall away as they continue down the worn dirt track across the hillside, Francis’s walking stick tapping as they go. Instead it slips around the crook of James’s elbow until their arms are linked, loosely at first and then as tightly as James had once walked arm-in-arm with a dozen different ladies down a dozen different garden paths, speaking of nothing in particular.

He and Francis speak of nothing at all. The ground is soft beneath his boots, the pain of cracked toenails and aching bones as far away as the real England is from him now;  a wind makes the long grasses on each side of the country path rustle, and stirs the hair on Francis’s forehead.

“What are you smiling about?” Francis says, scrutinizing him from the side with his own lips turning up.

James tightens his grip on Francis’s arm. “Idle fancies.” 

It helps, in part, to know that this is not truly happening. They are walking through a field of stones, as desolate as the surface of the moon; they are wearing the same clothes they have washed to gritty stiffness, not the finery of a county manor. Francis’s arm is not woven with his own. But the feeling of its solid weight keeps James anchored in this place, lost in the companionable silence between them undercut only with birdsong, and the desolate whistle of the wind.

 

* * *

 

 

With the frequency that Francis visits him in his tent, James really should have expected it to happen.

As it is, he and Francis are stooped over a hand-drawn map that one of the scouts made of the latest pressure ridge formation when Doctor Goodsir hurriedly steps inside, medical bag under his arm, turning around to whisk the tent flap closed behind him so quickly he has no time to register Francis’s presence. And James, having not expected this and therefore not prepared for it, spends the single moment when he might have saved himself watching the surprise spread over Francis’s face. By then, Goodsir has already begun to speak.

“Captain, I was careful that none should see me—” The sentence has already half-flown from Goodsir’s lips before he finishes turning and sees Francis at James’s side.

He blinks. James says nothing—can only stare at him haggardly and feel Francis’s eyes turn to him, without meeting them.

“Captain Crozier,” Goodsir says, the edge of a stammer in his words. “I did not mean to intrude—I can come back later.”

“Not at all, Doctor,” Francis says, and the note of ease in his voice would be a warning to even the stupidest man. “Was there something you needed?”

Goodsir straightens his shoulders subtly. “It was just a private matter I had to discuss with Captain Fitzjames.”

“A private matter which requires your medical bag?” James can quite literally _hear_ the raised eyebrow in Francis’s voice. Goodsir’s grip on the incriminating bag shifts. James still finds himself quite unable to look in Francis’s direction.

“I’m afraid, sir,” he says, and his voice is soft but firm, “that question is between me and Captain Fitzjames.”

“ _I_ am your captain, doctor, and I am ordering you to tell me whether there is something I need to know about the state of Captain Fitzjames’s health—"

“Oh, leave off him, Francis,” James says, turning away to drag a hand over his face. “At least allow me to explain myself.”

He sinks into a chair, his elbow on the table and his fingers dragging through his hair—carefully, now, for he’s likely to pull a bloody chunk away if he is not. Only then does he look up and meet Francis’s eye—who, he is beginning to expect, has scarcely looked away from him since the moment Goodsir entered.

“Leave us, Doctor,” he says, his voice softer now; a deceptive kind of softness, James knows well. Goodsir stays right where he is, looking to James; only when he offers a nod does Goodsir take his leave, with a single guilty glance over his shoulder. James might have told him he had nothing to feel guilty for. But at the moment he can only watch as Francis turns his back, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck before facing him again with a gesture that falls flat at his side. “Are you ill, James?”

It’s the way he speaks it—as if it’s both a sentence he can hardly bear to hear aloud, and also an answer so plainly obvious they both cannot help but know the answer. “You don’t need to worry about me,” James begins, and the noise Francis makes in the back of his throat is more a growl than anything.

“What I need and needn’t worry about is not your place to decide.” He’s still on the other side of the room, glaring at James like a cornered animal. “I am the captain— _your_ captain, as it were—and if you so much as sneeze twice in my presence it is _my_ decision whether or not to order you consigned to bed rest until the second coming of Christ Himself—”

“This is exactly why I thought it best you didn’t know,” James snaps before he can help himself. “You don’t need this, Francis, you don’t need me as a burden on top of everything else—”

“The only _burden_ , James, would be to have you drop dead in the middle of sledge-hauling because your damned pride permitted you from telling me you were sick!”

James opens his mouth—and then closes it again. For he has nothing to say, really, to that. He looks down, away from Francis’s face, made rigid and hard with something larger than anger. “It really is nothing, Francis.”

A long pause, and then a sigh. He hears Francis crossing the tent, sees his boots enter his field of vision before Francis pulls a chair around the table so he might sit directly in front of James. When James stubbornly keeps his gaze on the floor between them, Francis leans forward until James is forced to meet his eye.

“James,” he says, and in hearing his own name spoken like that James already knows he will do whatever it is Francis is about to ask. “I am asking you now not as your captain, but as your friend. Are. You. Ill.”

James’s fingers are still trailing listlessly in his own hair, elbow on the table. His hand is the only thing propping his head up now as he swallows drily. The man in front of him is not draped in illusions now. He’s tired and he’s grey and his eyes are sad. James is possessed by an urge to lean forward and place his head on the crumped shirt at Francis’s shoulder, overtaken by an exhaustion hat is more than a lack of sleep, more even than the bullet wound eating closer to his heart. 

“I’ve been seeing things,” James says. “Hearing. Feeling, even.”

Francis stares at him for a long while. He looks down, lacing his fingers between his knees; when he raises his head James watches him lick his lips, nodding slightly as if reasserting to himself that this is indeed a reality which he must face. “Can you tell me what, exactly?” His voice is steady, and yet too low to be calm.

James takes a breath that shakes only slightly. “Home.” He forces himself to hold Francis’s gaze. “England, I mean. Parlor rooms. Dinner parties. West End. There have been times, over the past week, when I have carried entire conversations with you while in the midst of these fancies. I can move and think and speak as I always did, only…” He shakes his head. “It was like being in a dream.”

“And Goodsir was here to treat you for them?”

James’s smile is sickly. “No, Francis. He was here at his own insistence, to make certain they were not getting worse. I—I would not permit him to treat me. I do not want them to stop.”

He really does have to look away, then. The pity he expects to see on Francis’s face would simply be too much. “So you see,” he says, staring at the floor between them, “why I did not wish for you to see me as any weaker than I already am. I’ve compromised my command, my ability to lead our men safely, just so I can dabble in pleasant fancies because I’ve given up on the real thing—”

Francis’s hand comes down on the back of his neck. It’s so sudden that for a moment James questions its existence; but Francis tilts his head back, and he finds himself staring into the man’s blue eyes much closer than they were before.

“I’ll not hear you speak in that way,” Francis says, his voice low. “Not of our chances, and not of yourself. You are _strong_ , James. And we are going to make it home.”

James wants to ask him if he truly believes it; _how_ he truly believes it. But with Francis’s eyes so close to his and so full of that solid conviction, James can do nothing but believe it too. Francis squeezes the back of his neck, shakes him ever so slightly; and finally James nods, blinking at the stinging in his eyes, and only then does Francis release him and lean back into his own chair once more.

“We are all pushed to our very ends, here,” he says at last. “Our minds are fraying as surely as our bodies are. And if these… experiences give you comfort, then I do not intend to be the one who takes them away. Now,” he says, rubbing a hand over his hair. “You say you are clearheaded during these lapses?”

James licks his dry lips. “If you have been unaware of any serious change in me, then I would like to believe it so.”

Francis nods. “Very well. In that case, I will _not_ insist that Doctor Goodsir attempt to treat this ailment. But I will insist on _daily_ visits, to gauge your well-being—and that should you find yourself in the middle of Covent Garden while in my presence in the future, you convey that to me immediately.”

James thinks of Francis’s arm linking with his own. The matching of their paces down a level garden path, going nowhere in particular. “I’ll try,” he says, and Francis’s smile is enough to make him think that perhaps, in truth, he will.

 

* * *

 

 

After all this time, and all that has happened over the course of it, he and Francis keep their dinners.  

The officers join them on occasion, but tonight they are alone; sitting at the small table Francis’s tent as the wind makes the fabric breathe, sharp inhales that bulge the canvas inward before sucking the air back out again. It’s a storm without rain or even hail out there on the plains tonight; just the flat grey which passes for the Arctic night, and the howling of the wind.

James misses the stars the way he misses the sun, during the weeks when it fails to visit the sky. But it’s not a yearning for the light, now; rather, for something beautiful. Something more than rocks and sky as grey as bleached bone, reflecting each other into pale oblivion.

“The cans will last us a while yet,” Francis is saying.  “Though of course, with what we now know, that’s hardly a comforting thought. We’ll send out hunting parties daily, and hope for the best.”

James raises another bite to his lips. According to the can, it’s roasted lamb. In reality, it’s grey mush that is best when it is tasteless. “And if the hunting parties are not successful?”

Francis shares a look with him that suggests any deity listening had better take heed. “They’ll have to be.”

It’s strange to think of their shipboard dinners—the hundreds they must have shared by now. How they had sat at a table not so unlike this one, in a room that was utterly different—how the officer’s mess had seemed so dark and cramped back then, with only this bitter, wretched man to share it with. Now he almost begrudges the pale canvas walls for being so far away, stranding them in the middle of a cold void instead of drawing them closer. He wants to draw the walls tightly around them like a coat against the wind.

He feels it beginning, this time.

Like the shifting of loose stone beneath his boot, settling into something new; the world seeping out through the hole in his side like a rush of water. It’s like falling asleep. James keeps his eyes on the tin in his hand, as the darkness crowds in at the edges of his vision—or not darkness, but rather a presence that wasn’t there before. Walls instead of grey canvas. Candles instead of Arctic sun.

He doesn’t glance in Francis’s direction as the rasp of metal scraping the tin is replaced with the soft clink of silverware on china. Nor as the wood beneath his fingers loses its nicks and pits; wavering for a moment, and then smooth. Resting on a cloth napkin, his hand is encased in an immaculate white glove. He raises it, and carefully touches a spoon lying upon the tablecloth; when he turns it over he sees his own face reflected from the dim light of the chandelier suspended in darkness above. It feels like the first time he has seen himself in a mirror in years. No trace of the sores, the limp, dull hair. The crackling of a fire fills the air; James can feel its warmth beating on his back like the wings of a bird.

“Francis.”  

At last he looks up. The pallor is gone from Francis’s cheeks. His hair is neatly parted, his vest carefully pressed and his cravat as bright as a knot of white flame at his throat. Firelight flickers over his face, darkening as much as it illuminates; he’s staring at James from his adjacent side of the table with an expression of mild concern, eyebrows slightly raised. In the soft, warm light he looks ten years younger, and yet no less like himself—indeed, more.

“James,” he says softly, but it isn’t concern that lowers his voice.

James takes a breath. “It’s happening.”

It is only because he is watching so closely he sees the tension gather in Francis’s shoulders. “How do you feel?”

 _I told you not to worry,_ he almost says. _Quite normal_ , he almost lies. “Good,” he says instead, the word rushing out on a breath. His head swims as if afloat in warm water. The constant aches of his body are as imperceptible as a shape on a distant hillside, wavering in the heat. “Better than I have in some time.”

At that, the tightness in Francis’s face eases.

For a while, they say nothing. James remains still, swaying slightly in his chair as if pulled by the tides of the vision which surrounds him. Trying to get a handle on it. Beneath the crackle of flame he can almost hear the howling of the Arctic wind, the snapping of the tent canvas. He orients himself to those sounds and then pushes away in precisely the opposite direction; until there is nothing but the room, the fire, and Francis sitting so near.  

“What is it you see?” Francis says softly.

James takes a breath. “A dining room. Perhaps the private one at the club where I took my rooms—yes, in fact, I’m sure of it.” He manages a smile. “I suspect we’ll still only taste the Gouldner’s, I’m afraid.”

Francis makes a low sound in his throat that could be a laugh. “I suppose these damned things will be with us to the bitter end,” he says, raising another bite to his lips. Out of habit, James lowers his hands the remove his gloves, laying them on his lap with the napkin overtop. Francis watches his motions as if unsure whether to smile or call for the doctor.

“The gloves,” James says, and Francis’s face softens. “I know they aren’t there, but it feels wrong to eat with them on.”

“Quite elaborate, this fantasy,” Francis says dryly. “Should I try to remove mine, as well?”

“I seem to have thought of that already,” James says, touching his temple lightly; for indeed Francis’s hands are bare where they lay on the table, the skin smooth and uncracked. James wonders how far the falsehood extends; whether, if he were to reach for the hand which lays on the table closest to him and trace its interior with his fingertips, whether he would find Francis’s palms unblistered by the guide-ropes of the harness.  

“What else is there?” James’s eyes flick back up. Francis is watching him, his expression almost wary—but soft, too. The firelight catches in the crease of his mouth, the hollows of his eyes. James wants to take him by both hands and lead him into this beautiful place. And then, perhaps, to remain there.

“You’ve lost the wools and slops,” he says at last. He forces himself to look up again, and study Francis’s appearance more closely. Francis waits, his elbows on the table and his hands folded in front of his mouth. The cuff of his perfectly white sleeve is visible, a crescent moon against his jacket.

“I assume I’m not sitting here naked,” Francis says, raising an eyebrow.

James’s head tips forward with a laugh, rough with lack of practice; when he looks up Francis is chuckling too, his grin spread wide over his face. He looks hale. Happy. James can’t look away, can’t conceive of a world in which he would want to.

“It’s dinner jackets and waistcoats tonight,” James says, taking another bite. “You look quite the gentleman, I’m surprised to say,”

“I take issue with that,” Francis says, waving his fork in James’s direction for emphasis; it’s a very ungentlemanly gesture, but James can imagine how he appears in truth; Francis in his shirtsleeves with the can on the table before him, no need for pretense between them. “I’ll have you know I’m perfectly capable of dressing myself out of uniform. When the occasion demands it.”

“Now that, I’d like to see.”

“I doubt you’d find it any more enjoyable than I did. You can likely imagine I was never particularly good at parties.”

“I can more than imagine it,” James says. “I was at the admiralty’s function as well, you may recall.”

“I do remember,” Francis says, his eyes glittering. “You were strutting around like a peacock in your dress uniform, telling those damn war stories of yours loudly enough that not one person in the banquet hall could hope to miss a detail.”

“And you were propped upright on the wall for as long as you could get away with it, glaring daggers at anyone who dared ask you a question about Ross or Antarctica that couldn’t be answered in a monosyllable.”

Francis raises his eyebrows meaningfully. “Made them regret it, too.”

James grins, leaning back in his chair. His eyes linger on Francis’s finery; the blue of his jacket so dark it’s almost black, his waistcoat slightly paler and crossed with the glittering chain of his watch. They’re sitting close enough that James could lean forward in his seat, and reach out to touch the silver buttons of his vest, as bright as stars at dusk. And when his eyes move upward, lingering for a moment at the hollow of Francis’s neck where it notches against his collar, he sees Francis is watching him watch him.  

“Francis,” James says before his common sense can get the better of him. “I am well aware of how unfair it is to ask this of you, as you’ve already indulged me so much—” He wets his lips. Francis is waiting patiently for him to finish. He can imagine how he looks, to Francis—his weathered clothes, his flesh hanging off his bones, a crown of dried blood at his scalp where the hair won’t stop loosening. But Francis stares at him as if he can stare straight into the beautiful vision where James is whole, and well.

“What would you have me do?”

James clears his throat. Looks down at his plate, a delicate china affair with a half-eaten serving of what appears to be roast pheasant with parsnips. “Might we just pretend, for a while?” 

For a moment agony flashes across Francis’s face, as sudden as lightning across a rainless summer storm cloud. Nothing more than a flicker of the eyes, a pinching in the mouth. And then the smile is back, but dark, so very dark behind it. Silently, his throat bobbing, Francis nods.

“So,” he says after a moment, his voice much rougher than it was before. He takes a bite of his meal, his lack of savor the only indication that everything about this image is not real. “Where are we going after dinner?”

James smiles down at his plate of food he will never be able to taste, raising a hand to quickly wipe his face. “Perhaps the theater? Last I looked they were still staging _Hamlet_ at Covent Gardens.”

“ _Hamlet_? Oh, James, not that tripe.”

“Tripe?” James blinks at him, genuinely taken aback. “It’s _Shakespeare_.”

“You’re the one who once claimed to disdain melodrama.”  

“Francis, you are _atrocious_.”  

They are back in England. James tells the story to himself as he launches into an argument on the merits of tragedy. They have survived, and they are back, and they are friends still, they are inseparable; they are having a meal, they are enjoying each other’s company, they are speaking of art. Francis is whole and well and so beautiful it’s almost strange, to look at him. To be unable to look away from him. They could stay in this room forever and the candles would burn no lower, and it strikes James that if heaven is a great house then this is certainly one of its rooms.

And in truth, as the words wind down and their food dwindles to nothing, James scarcely notices the tent creeping back in at the edges of the room, wood paneling turning to rough canvas, the light bleaching back to Arctic white. For Francis is there, even when all the rest of the glamor has fallen away, and James is so busy trying to get the man to smile wide enough to glimpse the gap in his teeth that he does not realize the vision is over until the wound in his side pulses like a second, erratic heartbeat.

 

* * *

 

 

That night, James dreams.

He is standing in a tent, but not like any they brought from _Erebus_. The roof stretches above him like the carnival his aunt (the closest thing he had to a mother) brought him to as a boy; only instead of dyed in motley the canvas is the same greying white of King William Land’s rocky scree; as if he stands entombed in the center of a great stone cairn.

“James?” Francis’s voice, calling to him from somewhere else. He turns—

—and is standing in a tent no longer. A great hall opens up around him the facets of a gem turned to the light, bright and glittering and spinning around him. There are people here, face he hasn’t seen in half a decade or more; a waltz moving around him on the glittering floor, ex-friends and ex-lovers and ex-political contacts, the human detritus of a life now telescoping behind him. They dance without seeing him at all, like he is an island and they the churning sea.

“I hope don’t plan to make me ask you.”

James turns. Francis is at his side, hands clasped loosely behind his back, his the black of his suit jacket stark against the white of his waistcoat. He’s looking at James from the side, a spark of mischief in the corner of his eye.

“What is this place?” James says, and even though it’s a dream his voice rings rough and unsteady in his ears. “I don’t recognize the hall.” In fact, he recognizes pieces of it; the pattern on the floor from his father’s country home, the few times he was permitted to visit; the drapery from the admiralty’s headquarters.

“Must it be anywhere?” Francis says lightly. There is something about him that James can’t quite put his finger on, something not quite right. “You’re thinking much too hard for this sort of thing, James.”

As if finally reaching him through a thick haze, Francis’s initial words sink in. “…Are you asking me to dance?”

“No, I don’t believe I am. That’s rather the point I was trying to make.”

He blinks. Shakes his head. The music seems to shudder with the motion, like water in a jostled cup. “I’m not certain we ought to.”

“Then I suppose it’s me asking, after all.” Francis’s hand settles in the small of his back, firm but gentle. But its Francis’s smile, more than anything, which guides James out onto the dance floor as the orchestra prepares for the next song. As they take their places the hand on his back remains, while Francis takes James’s other hand. There are no murmurs in that moment before the music begins, no titterings about the surplus of female partners waiting by the wall. Just Francis, solid before him.

“This isn’t real,” James says, as the music starts and they begin to move; Francis leads and James allows it, though the sensation is unfamiliar and sends a distant flicker of competitiveness through him.

“I suppose that’ll be your excuse for dancing so poorly tonight, then.” Francis’s grip on James’s back shifts as they move across the floor. Sliding higher, pulling him closer.

James stares into his face, desolate, trying to drink as much of this moment in as possible. Francis is warm and solid. But he smiles too quickly, too easily; and James has never seen the man dance, cannot even _imagine_ it, but he knows it would not be like this. Not quick and light and dashing, but rather stiff and self-conscious and all the more charming for it.

“You’re not real either, are you.” It isn’t really a question, and part of himself—the part which wishes to indulge in this fantasy wholly—hates him for asking the question aloud, and thus making it true. “The real Francis would never willingly take a dance.”

In the middle of the floor, they come to a halt; the hand on James’s back gradually slips away, and he takes a step back, though it pains him to do so. The smile is gone from Francis’s face, which makes him more himself; it’s like looking into the face of a painting. A clever likeness, but one painted in the brushstrokes of James’s own mind.

Still he stares. He can hear the rasp of the violin strings, smell the women’s perfume as they whirl past, never so much as brushing him. It’s bright and it’s beautiful and there is no pain at all—

“You can stay here, if you want,” Francis says.

The ball room is gone. The strings of the waltz are far away now, as if drifting from a distant open doorway; the chirping of crickets almost overpowers it. They’re on a balcony now, overlooking a long green lawn made cold and alien by moonlight. Francis leans on the stone bannister, lit from the light of the open doorway behind and watching James closely. 

James understands exactly what it is that’s being offered to him. He can hardly have spent so long slipping between worlds to not know that he is dying. But instead he leans on the railing at Francis’s side, their shoulders brushing in the night air with a chill that bites far deeper than it should. Their breaths mist. James shivers, and the cold is deeper than bone.

“I don’t think England is supposed to be this cold,” James says.  

“Perhaps that comes from a lack of imagination on your part,” Francis replies with a wry smile.

“I suppose you could be right. I think I’ve forgotten what it means to be truly warm.” James stares down the grassy slope, watching the grass ripple in the faint night breeze. He has no energy to feel much of anything at all. “I suppose I’ll never get the chance to remember, now.”

Francis’s shoulder bumps against his again. “Stay here,” he says gently. “You’ll forget the cold, as well. And the pain.”

James smiles to stop his mouth from twisting down. “And you.” This Francis who isn’t Francis does not bother to deny it.  

He wants very badly to reach out and take Francis’s hand in his. And because it is a dream, and _his_ dream no less, he allows himself to do so. Francis squeeze back immediately, allowing James to lace their fingers together; gone are the white gloves. He feels Francis’s skin on his skin, and it would be perfect, is so very _close_ to perfect.

“It hardly seems sporting,” he says at last, “to abandon the men before my due.” He takes a ragged breath, staring at their entwined hands. “And I think if I might have even a few more days with you, I should be very sorry to miss them.”

In the beautiful dream, Francis smiles. This time, the expression rings true. James knows he could lean forward right now, he could allow himself this one final indulgence, he could allow himself _anything_ —but he does not, for waking will be hard enough without carrying the weight of those memories with him.

So he squeezes Francis’s hand one final time, and then pulls his fingers away. “I ought to get back,” he says, and opens his eyes on the canvas of his tent’s roof, tugging and flicking in the wind.

 

* * *

 

 

When he goes to Francis just after, exhausted and in pain and with the taste of blood in his mouth, he walks into the tent and slumps into a chair without greeting, holding Francis’s gaze across the room with an expression which hangs open and hides nothing.

After a long while Francis asks the question, in a voice as soft as his eyes. “What do you see?”

James shifts his arm against the death branded into his side, and smiles like some lonely lost thing sighting a safe harbor; far away, but perhaps not quite beyond the reach of his endurance. “Nothing,” he says. “Just you.”  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find me [on tumblr!](plaidmax.tumblr.com)


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